Gold (River Sunday Romance Mysteries Book 4) Page 21

  “Ricker, now you’re talking,” said Bent. “Come on, I knew I could count on you. We got to load up that raft and get the hell out of here.”

  “You just going to leave us here?” asked Andy. “Just like you killed those other people?”

  “Lady, we haven’t killed anybody yet,” said Ricker. “We just didn’t expect you to be here. We get out of here and if like you say the place fills up with water, then any rescue is going to find a couple of drowned people.”

  Bent added, “Not our fault you got yourself caught down here. No one will ever know we were even here.”

  “I saw you with the Captain at the well,” said Ricker. “Far as I knew, you were up on the surface, waiting out the storm. That’s the way we will say it if we are asked. Besides, it’s not likely that anyone will ask us.”

  “Got any better ideas, Johnny?” Ricker said as he moved forward, pushing John aside. The real estate broker approached the gold sun disk and tried to lift it. He did not have enough strength to lift the heavy item and stood back from it, swearing.

  “Get the lighter stuff,” shouted Bent. “Don’t be greedy,” he added, as John listened, amazed at the thief’s irony.

  The two men worked quickly to pick out small items of solid gold and put them into shoulder packs that they had brought with them.

  “You’ll never get away with this,” said Andy.

  “Why not,” asked Bent, with a grin.

  “All the people up above. They’ll know what happened here.”

  Bent laughed and said, “You’re not going to tell them.”

  John said, “Mouse and the Captain will figure it out.”

  Ricker replied, “Johnny, I don’t think so. As far as they will know you drowned down here. When we show up with some of the gold, we can say we never saw you. It’s our word against Mouse and his father.”

  “You killed the monks,” said John.

  “I told you I didn’t kill nobody,” Bent said as he put down a fully loaded pack. “I don’t know nothing about no monks.”

  “You left the burning monastery when I arrived, left those men dead on the floor,” said John.

  Bent said, “Someone else you’re thinking of, lawyer. It’s a big world out there.”

  Bent had finished filling his raft with several bags of loot. Ricker had taken over John’s raft and had filled it. He started to climb in and push the rubber raft off the shoreline.

  “Look at it on the positive side. You two might even find a way out of here. Then you can bring out your own share of the gold,” said Bent. “Plenty to go around.”

  Then, a familiar one came out of the darkness. “None of this is yours, Bent.”

  John looked at Andy with hope in his eyes. He recognized the grumbling voice of Captain Penny.

  Bent turned with his light but could not see the approaching raft. All of them grew silent, listening. John heard the sound of paddles out on the dark lake.

  “This treasure is just as much mine as yours, Penny,” shouted Bent, brandishing his gun with one hand as he moved the flashlight with the other, trying to see his target in the darkness.

  “It will never be yours, Bent,” replied the Captain. His voice sounded closer.

  “You two killed the farmer and his wife, We found them where you left them, knife cuts all over them,” said Mouse, speaking for the first time.

  “Tolman is dead?” asked Ricker. John saw him look at Bent.

  “You cut him and his wife up pretty good before he died,” said Mouse.

  “We left him guarding the gate. We didn’t kill him,” said Bent.

  “Who did?” asked Mouse.

  John could see them as the light picked them up. The Captain was in the front of the raft. Ricker and Bent aimed their guns. At that instant the Captain jumped, crashing into Ricker. He knocked the man to the ground, Ricker’s gun falling from his hand into the water.

  The Captain shouted, punctuating his words with his fists as he struck the real estate man over and over, “You don’t belong here, Wink Ricker, not you or your asshole partners and you aren’t going to steal anything.”

  Ricker called out, trying to fend off Penny’s fists “Bent, get him off of me.”

  John’s mind was racing. His anger had been growing, partially because of his respect for the site, for its religious and historical mystery, something that he and the others had no right to disturb, partly because of what these thieves were threatening to do to the old priest’s treasure, but mostly because of the danger to Andy.

  As Bent aimed to fire at the Captain, John threw himself forward. He took Bent by surprise and the thief fell backward into the water. Bent was quick and tried to raise his gun. John caught the man’s gun arm in a lock, making him drop the gun into the water. He threw him flat on the beach. Bent snarled and, with his other hand, pulled a knife from his belt. He raised it to stab at John.

  Andy had grabbed one of the golden statues. She swung it into the side of Bent’s face. He grunted and pushed her back into the water. John saw the hilt of a gold dagger shining from the top of a treasure knapsack in Bent’s raft. He grabbed the ancient Inca knife and twisted it toward Bent. John remembered the lesson from his foster father’s Special Forces friend, hearing him shout “Go for the holes.” John thrust the knife. Instantly, Bent stumbled back into the lake, dropping his own knife, clutching at the hilt of the gold dagger that John had jammed into his left eye socket. His blood spurted forward in a stream and Bent was dead before he collapsed into the water, his body leveling out and floating lifeless, a red stain spreading around him like a toxic spill.

  John, his body reacting like the fighter he had once been, turned to help the Captain. Ricker had climbed on top of the old treasure hunter and was raising his gun. With a kick to the man’s head, John knocked Ricker off balance, but the revolver fired, landing a round into the side of the Captain. The real estate tycoon crashed on top of one of his treasure knapsacks. By now, Mouse was ashore and running up to assist John, yelling to John to let him handle Ricker.

  “What took you guys so long?” yelled John. Ricker moved away from the Captain, grabbing two of the treasure packs. He staggered into the lake and disappeared into the darkness.

  Mouse said, “Let him go. He can’t get far. We have to help the Captain.”

  They knelt beside the Captain who was trying to stop the blood coming out of his side. As he stripped back the Captain’s shirt, Mouse said, “We tried to get the pump going and then gave it up. That’s when we heard this explosion coming from over to Tolman’s farm. A big cloud of earth went up a hundred feet into the rain. Captain said we ought to go over and see what the farmer had up his sleeve. So we did.”

  “Well, I’m glad you did,” John said.

  “Don’t worry about me,” the Captain said. “Damn him, the son of a bitch shot me.”

  Andy was checking Bent for vitals.

  “Don’t bother. He’s dead,” John said.

  The Captain looked at Bent’s body in the water. “He would have killed you.”

  “All of us,” said John.

  “I’m glad he’s dead and I never thought I’d say that about anyone,” said Andy.

  “He always had good taste,” said the Captain. “Taste at taking other people’s things.”

  John said, “He claimed he didn’t kill the farmer and his wife. He said also he didn’t kill the others.”

  “I wouldn’t believe him,” said Penny.

  “It looked like the farmer was left there as a guard,” said Mouse. “Strange that they would have left him dead right by the gate where we could find him. The wife was killed there too. All cut up and bloody. Smelled like gasoline too. Like someone was going to burn the bodies.”

  The Captain said, “This treasure.” He held up his hands full of jewels. “All my life I’ve looked for it. By God, I’ve finally found it.”

  John looked out to try to see Ricker. He could not see him but could hear coughing noises of a man taking water into
his mouth as he struggled to stay afloat.

  “Ricker, come back,” John called.

  Ricker called back from the darkness. “I wasn’t planning to kill anyone. That was not the way it was supposed to be.”

  John yelled back, “You best come back here and surrender. Bent has killed the farmer and his wife. Do you really think he would have let you escape the tunnel back to the surface? He probably had it figured to bury you in the tunnel as soon as you helped him with the gold.”

  Ricker screamed, “I’m drowning.”

  “Let go the gold. It’s the weight of that gold that’s making you sink,” called John. He nodded to Mouse and they both began calling him, as they pushed the Captain’s raft from the beach. They stopped and listened to get a direction to paddle to. They heard no noise of swimming, no calls for help, nothing. They waited a few minutes calling from time to time and then pushed the raft back to shore.

  Andy said, “He’ll sink all the way down to the bolite. He won’t stop falling down deep. No one will ever find him.”

  “A hundred miles deep,” said John.

  She nodded and answered him, a look of sadness in her eyes, “Unless his body snags on something. Some of the shaft walls may not be smooth.”

  “Come on, you guys,” said Mouse. “We have to get out of here. The water is rising.”

  “He’s right,” said Andy, looking back toward the temple where she could see the glint of the lake. “The water has come up to the bottom of the treasure house.”

  “Just like at the Nova Scotia site. We’re going to lose all this gold,” said the Captain, sadness in his voice.

  “Yeah, well, I just hope we get out with our lives,” said Mouse. “We’ll go out the way we came in, through the farmer’s tunnel.”

  John looked at the three rafts beached at the edge of the temple area.

  “One for each of us,” said Mouse.

  The waves were higher now with the inflowing water. Mouse said, “Lighten these boats. Throw off the treasure bags. We’re going to have to paddle like hell against this. We can make it if we hurry.”

  Bent’s body had drifted among the treasure in the structure. He was face down floating into the mummy area.

  “Where’s Hoadley?” John asked.

  Mouse smiled at the Captain, who was now placed in the front of his raft. The Captain said, “We sent him for the police. When we got to the Tolson farm, Hoadley came up to me and admitted to me that he filed the cable. Bent was going to turn him over to that local police chief for an old outstanding warrant. Bent blackmailed him. Hoadley was afraid he’d have to go to prison. When he saw the bodies of the Tolsons all cut up, he couldn’t go on with the blackmail. So I said that he had to be the messenger to go for the police and get some help. I said I’d trust him and that I knew he wouldn’t let us down. That’s where he is now.”

  John said, “You think he will do it or has he just left town?”

  “I can trust him,” said the Captain. “We have too much together and he did admit what Bent did to him.”

  “I hope you are right,” said Mouse.

  “How long do we have?” asked John, as he picked up his paddle.

  “You don’t have to worry,” a voice said, as a figure in another raft came out of the darkness. “I’ll take care of you.”

  Chapter 23

  Friday, July 19, 2 PM

  “Who are you?” asked John, breaking the silence.

  “They call me Taint.” Taint held an automatic pistol in one hand and moved his flashlight with the other. He chuckled as he saw Andy’s glare at him. Then he held the light on the Captain lying in one of the rafts.

  Taint asked, “What happened to him?”

  “Hurt in a fight,” said John. He could see why Celebrity Brown had feared this man. There was no emotion in his voice, simply the message that he didn’t care who he killed to get what he wanted.

  Taint saw Bent’s body. It had drifted with the rising lake surface and floated among the treasure in the structure. A mummy was bobbing beside Bent.

  “I see you got the best of that guy. Where is Wick Ricker?”

  “Drowned,” said Andy. She said it with ferocity in her voice.

  Taint smiled and moved the flash to Mouse who glared back.

  “Hold on, big boy.” Then he said, “Look, I’ll make it easy on you people. You all want to live a little longer, you got to work.”

  “At least let Andy out of here,” said John.

  “Why, that’s very loving of you, attorney Neale. You put her welfare ahead of yours. I would never do that for no bitch. You want to help her, OK. First thing you can do is find all those bags of treasure that you threw into the lake. That’s right. Put them right back into the rafts. I’m sure that Ricker picked only the best items.”

  John studied Taint and recognized the man from the description he had been given by the Chief. The mustache had been shaved off and the hair lightened but the face was still like that of a rodent. The small eyes looked like an animal ready to pounce.

  John said, “The police are looking for you for the murder of your girl Celebrity.”

  Taint replied, with a slight Hispanic accent, “I heard that she died. Best I had on the corner. She had so much enthusiasm for the work when she started with me years ago. She was so young and she loved her drugs so much. That’s what you want, man, someone always surpassing the other girls, getting more tricks than anybody each night. Then she got sick and couldn’t do so well. What’s a person to do? We have no retirement plans on the street, you know.”

  He chuckled, a throaty and menacing gurgle of a laugh, and he said, “Police didn’t find me, did they? I got here even with them knowing my car and its plate. I never worry about them fools.”

  “How did you find out about the money?” asked John.

  John saw the look of pride come over Taint’s face. Drawing on his lawyer talents, he figured this guy wanted an audience. Taint said, “Celebrity’s father was a talker. That was his problem. He told too many people he was melting gold for the old priest. Fool told me,” said Taint, with another ugly laugh. “I started following the old priest back to the Eastern Shore but I couldn’t find out where he was getting the gold. Then, when you came snooping around, I didn’t want old man Green to tell you I’d been in his shop. I figured you might get too smart about me. So I reasoned with him, that’s all.”

  “Like you reasoned with the monks?

  “Why didn’t they just tell me what I wanted to know?”

  “You beat them to death,” said Mouse.

  Taint smiled. “Ain’t it true that religious people like to be persecuted? I was just doing them a favor, getting them closer to Jesus.”

  “You went through my office,” said John.

  “I did? I’m sure you had a nice one. Lawyers always do. ‘Course hanging around River Sunday for a little while I heard all the rumors. All I had to do then was watch and wait until you found the gold for me. This Ricker fellow was easy to figure out too. He never knew I was there all the time. He was easy to spot, a big shot,” Taint said, making that same gurgle again.

  Taint stood balanced on his raft, one foot on each side in the calm water, the bow just touching the shoreline. In his right hand he leveled the pistol.

  “The rafts won’t hold all this treasure and still take us,” said John. “Captain Penny needs to be carried out in one by himself.”

  “You just volunteered yourself to carry him along in the water. He’s a grown man. He won’t mind my taking the raft space for the gold.”

  “What guarantee do we have that you won’t blow up that tunnel before we get out?” asked John.

  “You have my word. I have to leave it open so you can help me carry out the treasure,” said Taint.

  “His word is meaningless,” said Mouse. “He’s got to be the one who killed the farmer and his wife.”

  “That’s right. Taint uses gasoline, don’t you,” said John.

  The killer waved his pis
tol. “Enough talk. Let’s get these other rafts loaded, because as you can see the water is indeed rising.”

  “You won’t get away with this,” said Andy.

  “I already have.”

  They began pulling the wet bags from the water and repacking them in the rafts. Captain Penny was lifted to the shore. He lay in the shallow water of the beach, holding his side. Andy had stopped the blood by wrapping the Captain’s shirt tightly around his waist.

  John passed close to Mouse as they worked and whispered, “Get the light out. I can jump him.”

  “So how did you figure out where we were?” John asked, trying to keep Taint talking and appealing to his obvious ego.

  “Wasn’t hard. You think I am stupid,” he replied.

  “No, I think you are smart,” said John, slowly moving toward Taint.

  “I saw you come in that burning monastery. You were the man I had hoped would be around, lawyer. Afterward, you pretty much led me right to this place, you and your big friend over there.”

  He went on, “Then I saw the old man, Jesse, get that rubber boat the other day. He was trying to hide it but nobody can’t fool Taint. I knew you had found something down in that hole you were digging. You found something that needed a boat and I figured it was a cave with water in it. My land, I was right, too.”

  “When did you kill the pawnbroker?”

  “I didn’t kill him. Celebrity was afraid of you and what you might do to her father. She wanted my help, lawyer. That’s what men like me do for our girls, in case you didn’t know. So I got over to the shop and made sure you wouldn’t find nothing to get her father in trouble.”

  “You burned her father to death,” said John.

  “I don’t know who did that. Probably some homeless. I did take out the rest of the coins he was melting. He still had a few left and he had some more engraved one gram pieces he liked to make up for the old priest. Cleaned up his shop real nice.”

  “What happened to Celebrity?”

  “You know, I was wondering where she disappeared to. I know she needed a rest, something nice out on the Bay, you know. She likes to swim. Then I found out she was discovered by the cops in an alley, all burned up. Girls on the street don’t like to have their features burned because it takes away their ability to entice. That’s what I always tell them when they are starting out. Protect what you got so you can entice.”